In the absence of swift political intervention, an estimated 30–40 million people in the United States will be evicted within the next several months as a result of Covid-19 job loss. In New York City there is a temporary eviction moratorium in place until May 2021, though this policy does little to address the housing crisis that was building even before the pandemic. Explaining this moratorium, Governor Andrew Cuomo stated: “I want people to have fundamental stability in their lives, nobody is going to be evicted.” Nonetheless, this measure, while a start, does little to establish meaningful stability for renters.
Judith Goldiner from The Legal Aid Society has criticized Cuomo’s moratorium, explaining that it does not protect renters from hostile litigation from landlords: “The devil is in the details, and we have yet to see an executive order with any specifics. A true moratorium will protect all tenants regardless of circumstance and not include any exemptions that landlords could exploit to drag our clients to court on frivolous grounds. Moreover, New York will still be very much be in the midst of a public health crisis through much of 2021, and relief for tenants must extend well beyond the end of the pandemic.” These taciturn policies reveal the city and state’s lack of a coherent, comprehensive approach to the housing crisis. Renters have continually been left in the dark about the protections to which they do or don’t have access.
Last March, the state issued a 90 day eviction moratorium, which Cuomo then extended this until October 20th, before extending it again until January 2021, and then again until May. Until Cuomo announced this latest extension, he routinely extended each moratorium only a few days before it was set to expire, causing panic from tenant lawyers and landlords alike. This haphazard approach and general lack of long-term policy caused an ongoing sense of panic, as evidenced by ongoing housing protests that have taken place all over the city, many of which were met with significant NYPD violence and arrests.
The virus caused illness and infection, but it did not cause the broad social unrest and precarity that has unfolded since last March. Rather, our social and political systems were already scant and deteriorating, and in the absence of a substantial social safety net, the pandemic was able to wreak even more havoc on millions of vulnerable people. Before last March, the two pillars of New York’s distinctive housing system—public housing and rent regulation—were already under threat; they are now, of course, in an even more dire state.
The coronavirus therefore has made clear what public housing advocates already knew: the United States cannot continue to neglect a cohesive housing policy. Disorganized and insufficient measures like a short-term rent moratorium cannot meaningfully address the housing catastrophe that is exacerbating by the day. Instead of placing a band-aid on the eviction and rent crises, we need to finally invest in long-term solutions.
For an example of what such durable policy would look like, we can look to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s April 2020 bill,H.R. 6516: the Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act. This proposed bill covers emergency pandemic relief, such as national rent and mortgage suspension retroactive to April 1. Importantly, it also outlines a buyout fund which prevents massive corporate purchases and real estate speculation (which occurred after the 2008 crisis), and would begin a green transition to social housing. In New York City, this approach would involve the city building social housing units to address the homelessness crisis, reinvesting in existing NYCHA housing, and de-commodifying housing with measures like a pied-a-terre tax.
The commodification of the housing market assumes that housing is a speculative good. The pandemic, however, has revealed that housing is a human right and a matter of public health. You cannot “stay inside” in a bid to stop the spread if you do not have stable access to a home. Anything less than a bold, sweeping rehaul of public housing will be unsustainable.
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At the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, 47.5% of all renter households were rental cost-burdened (i.e. spending over 30% of their income on rent), and 25% were spending over 50% of their income on rent per month. Housing was already the single largest expenditure for most households, often serving as a household’s primary determinant of financial security. Between 2000 and 2016, median gross rents increased by 8.6% while median renter incomes decreased by 6.2%.
Following eviction, a person’s likelihood of experiencing homelessness increases, mental and physical health are diminished, and the probability of obtaining employment declines. Eviction is also linked to numerous poor health outcomes, including depression and suicide. It is further linked with respiratory disease, which could increase the risk contracting Covid-19 and increase mortality if contracted. Families who are evicted regularly lose their possessions, lose their jobs, and experience higher rates of depression. For children, the instability caused by eviction can result in worse outcomes in education, health, and future earnings.
Eviction precarity notably breaks down along racial and gendered lines. People of color are twice as likely to be renters and are disproportionately likely to be low-income and rental cost-burdened. Across the country, people of color—particularly black and Latino people—constitute around 80% of those facing eviction. In addition, the U.S. has a higher eviction rate for women, and particularly for women of color. In Milwaukee, WI, for example, women in predominantly black neighborhoods constitute 30% of those evicted despite comprising only 9.6% of the city’s population. Nationally,8% of Latina women and an astounding 20% of black women are evicted each year. Myriad factors lead to this gendered precarity; in particular, landlords often evict victims of domestic violence or even deny their applications in order to “protect the safety of their properties.”
Mass evictions also have tremendous public costs. It is approximately three times more costly to allow a family to lose its home and end up in the shelter system than it is to protect their access to housing. Protecting housing is therefore a public good as well as an individual good.
Housing reform is already in the works in New York City, with various state, local, and federal representatives calling for reinvestment in NYCHA and for a Green New Deal for Public housing. In particular, a pied-à-terre tax is on the table in Albany. The proposed bill would impose a tax on non-primary residences (high-value second homes) in New York City with market values exceeding $5 million. Senator Brad Hoylman introduced a similar bill in the spring of 2019, but the city’s real estate sharks fought it tooth and nail, effectively shutting it down until Hoylman reintroduced this past summer. The pied-a-terre tax—by no means a new proposition in New York City—is predicated on the principle that owners of these high-value secondary homes are not full-time residents of the city, and by taxing their properties we can instead direct funding to services that can benefit New Yorkers. For example, Hoylman’s version of the tax aims to bail out the MTA, which is in dire need of funding.
The jarring statistics surrounding eviction make it clear that we must act swiftly and decisively to decommodify housing in the interest of protecting public health and establishing stability for vulnerable people.